Page 46 of Shifters in the Night

And because Jeff was still watching her, an anxious expression on his face, she took a long sip of the brew. Just like everything else from Bathtilda’s, it was pretty much flawless. “Mmm, thanks.”

He smiled and seemed to relax. “It’s all going to be fine. He’s just in a mood right now because he’s had some offers get … well, the nice word is ‘rejected.’”

“Is he still trying to buy property on Main Street?” she asked carefully.

“He told you about that?” Jeff sighed. “Oh, thank goodness, I was so uncomfortable not telling you about it. It just didn’t make any sense and I felt so gross about the whole thing.”

Warmth for Jeff fluttered through her chest. He was a good guy, just too easily influenced by his loyalties to family. “Yeah, but he didn’t really mean to. It’s a development that could work somewhere else, but I don’t think this project is going to pan out the way he thinks it will.”

“It’s not panning out at all,” Jeff muttered. “Nobody is willing to even talk to him about selling the property he needs and with the League so close, he’s afraid to try to play dirty. He’s stalled out, which is probably why he’s being such a bear right now.”

She drank the last of the coffee. “Just so you know, that’s an insult to bears. Some of them stay in delightful moods, most of the time. ”

While Jeff looked at her in confusion, she grinned at him and closed her office door behind her.

* * *

Between spending time with Jon and the distractions of her job, the Founder’s Day decorations were going up on the town square before she knew it. She’d kept her head down in the office and monitored Victor as much as possible – secretly pleased with his seething frustration. She kept her conversations with Jeff strictly to office chat, because she didn’t want to give him any information he might feel pressured to share with Victor – like the fact that she was discussing exit strategies with her father. Victor remained closed off in his office or absent entirely. Lia wasn’t entirely sure he was even going to attend the festivities, given how often he was in and out of town, giving no notice of what he was doing or when he was planning to return. And that made her nervous.

While Victor hadn’t appeared to make any progress on his Main Street development, Lia had created a detailed, multi-step plan with one goal in mind – Get Victor out of Mystic Bayou as soon as possible. The first step was completing construction on the apartment complex and the final step was resigning while trying not to shout the word “fuck” in anyone’s face.

Jon wouldn’t be attending the Founder’s Festival. He’d been called out of town that morning for some sort of tragic incident involving one of his biggest clients’ prize trawler and a colony of nutria. He and Eva were driving all the way down to the coast for an emergency repair and wouldn’t be back for two days. They’d both been terribly disappointed. But Lia was starting to believe there would be other Founder’s Days in the future, where she and Jon would stuff themselves with funnel cake and wander with their friends. Also, Lia was remarkably proud of herself for not flinching at all when Jon told her that he would be travelling for two days with Eva. She thought it showed emotional growth, or at least, emotional-getting-out-of-her-own-way.

The night of the festival, the town square had been transformed. While it was charming before, now it looked like a semi-rural, nostalgic paradise. Strings of lights hung between the streetlamps and trees, each strand seeming to lead toward the gazebo. Food stalls were giving away shrimp and gumbo and sauerkraut and sausage, steamed dumplings and elotes, and of course, pie. And in a concession to Victor’s wishes, each booth was marked with a tiny sign that read, “Complimentary food provided by New Ground Construction,” with the exception of the pie booth. When Lia had offered to include the pie shop in the sponsorship, Bathtilda Boone had merely shaken her head and closed herself up in her office. Siobhan assured her that was how she responded to most “solicitations.”

Lia didn’t know how to take that one.

Cordelia Canton had arranged for a traveling carnival company to provide small-scale rides like a carousel and a Ferris wheel. Other local businesses had put blown up black-and-white photo displays on their windows, showing the early days of Mystic Bayou, so it felt like a museum installation. And, placed right in front of the barely-begun construction site, in front of a billboard-sized sign advertising New Ground, was the company’s primary contribution – a stage where locals presented skits based on the town’s history, including the Berend-based origin story.

There were so many people out. And they all seemed so happy. Families and couples and friend groups, laughing and smiling – it was such a pleasant change from the strange emotional tension of her office. Her coworkers were milling around in the crowd, and she was glad to see them accepted by the locals, plied with treats and carnival prizes. Lia recognized some employees from around the League compound, who seemed delighted in their decision to take their respective jobs. She couldn’t imagine that other League personnel assigned to the more remote, sometimes Arctic locations, were having this much fun. And they definitely weren’t enjoying the same level of food.

The emotional energy of the scene was almost intoxicating, the joy and pleasure radiating off every person there, just one big bubble of golden sparkles and lime green waves … which was much more attractive than it sounded. Sticking out like an unpleasant fungus in this emotional landscape was Dr. Bremmer, whose booth was centered on the theme of “Limit Mystic Bayou Housing.”

Which was a weird theme for a celebratory booth.

She supposed the bright side was that Dr. Bremmer was the only one standing at the booth. Foot traffic veered around it like he was showing vacation slides. Lia approached the table, which was covered in hastily printed brochures warning that New Ground apartment buildings wouldn’t solve Mystic Bayou’s housing crisis, that it would only make the traffic and crowding worse.

For a second, Lia was half-tempted to help Dr. Bremmer derail her project, just go full-on self-destruction and get fired so Victor would be run out of town and most of her problems would be solved … but that would just worsen Mystic Bayou’s very real housing crisis and make future projects to benefit the Bayou even more difficult to build.

Damn her reasonable conscience.

Lia kept her expression as neutral as possible as she looked to Dr. Bremmer. “I would ask why, but I’m just going to start with ‘what is this?’”

He smiled at her. “I’m collecting signatures for a petition to prevent the construction of your ill-advised complex until a committee can be appointed to determine how to build neighborhoods of single-family homes far enough outside of town that Main Street isn’t so crowded.”

“You do realize that construction has already started, right?” Lia asked him.

He waved his clipboard dismissively. “A technicality. With enough signatures, the League and the parish will have to listen to me.”

The weird gray miasma of smugness that surrounded Dr. Bremmer matched his moustache, but it was streaked with something else – a sort of beige, deception. Maybe this sad little booth and doomed petition was just a feint? Maybe he had something more clever up his sleeve?

“You have four names,” she said, glancing at his clipboard. “And one of them is your own.”

“Trust me, there are plenty of people around here who agree with me,” Dr. Bremmer said. “They may not tell you to your face, but they don’t want things to change around here.”

“What does Mr. Lancaster think of all this?” she asked him.

The gray smugness disappeared and made way for deception entirely. “We’ve scheduled a meeting to talk about it.”

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